Measurement of Neutrino-Induced Charged-Current Charged Pion Production Cross Sections on Mineral Oil at E$_{\nu}\sim 1~\textrm{GeV}$

TL;DR

This paper presents detailed measurements of neutrino-induced charged pion production cross sections on mineral oil at around 1 GeV, providing new data crucial for neutrino interaction models and oscillation experiments.

Contribution

It reports the first measurements of various differential cross sections for this process on a nuclear target in the 1 GeV energy range, using high-statistics MiniBooNE data.

Findings

First measurements of CCπ+ cross sections on mineral oil at ~1 GeV

Differential cross sections as functions of energy and angles

Decoupling of neutrino energy spectrum shape from cross section results

Abstract

Using a high-statistics, high-purity sample of $\nu_\mu$-induced charged current, charged pion events in mineral oil (CH$_2$), MiniBooNE reports a collection of interaction cross sections for this process. This includes measurements of the CC$\pi^+$ cross section as a function of neutrino energy, as well as flux-averaged single- and double-differential cross sections of the energy and direction of both the final-state muon and pion. In addition, each of the single-differential cross sections are extracted as a function of neutrino energy to decouple the shape of the MiniBooNE energy spectrum from the results. In many cases, these cross sections are the first time such quantities have been measured on a nuclear target and in the 1 GeV energy range.